Democrats' other scandal: What did the president know about ObamaCare and when?
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Hillary Clinton's cascading email scandal has overshadowed the other bombshell from last week: ObamaCare's exploding premiums. Were these honest mistakes or was there a health care coverup here as well?
It may be time to ask: What did the president know and when did he know it?
Everyone now sees and feels financial calamity of ObamaCare. With the latest news of premium increases of 20-25 percent, insurance companies dropping out, and rising costs to taxpayers, this is truly the Hindenburg of health plans. With deductibles up to $3,500 for average families Out-of-pocket costs can be double what they were before ObamaCare.
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This now has the look of a large-scale financial fraud. Liberals rammed the Affordable Care Act through Congress, and as Nancy Pelosi admitted, few Democrats read the bill before passage. Perhaps that was so they could plead plausible deniability.
We know that one of the scholarly architects of the plan knew of its defects and privately called the voters stupid to support it.
This was a sham from the moment Obama said it would "save $2,500 per family" and Pelosi famously followed up by guaranteeing that the Affordable Care Act would be "affordable, affordable, affordable."
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The White House and Congressional Budget office cooked the books to make it appear it wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime and that it was all paid for by counting 10 years of revenue but only eight years of spending. That's Enron accounting.
If a private CEO made these fantastical claims with a company health care plan, Elizabeth Warren would be clamoring for jail sentences.
By suspending the mandates and penalties for those who didn't sign up for insurance, Obama accelerated the death spiral in costs.
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The sick signed up, the young and the healthy stayed away. This "adverse selection" effect is a major reason the premiums are rising so ruinously. A Heritage study finds 60 percent premium hikes since ObamaCare began.
The insurance companies were all in for ObamaCare, but surely their actuaries could see the cliff ahead with costs rising faster than premiums. Now they are seeking a taxpayer bailout of the insurance fund. Did they know that was coming? Was their a secret handshake between the by the big insurers like Aetna and the White House?
Liberals always wanted a "public option," with the government competing with private insurers. But Congress wisely voted that down because it would lead to a government-run insurance system.
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The left knew the death spiral was coming and this would add to the case for the public option. Sure enough, the Democrat's "fix" for the stampede of higher costs is just that.
In other words, ObamaCare has arrived at exactly the crisis moment its architects knew would arrive. This was a planned failure, and the only surprise is that the collapse has happened inconveniently just a few weeks before the election.
If Hillary wins we get the resurrection of HillaryCare -- government run health care. Clinton and her liberal allies waited almost a quarter century for this moment. They lied and lied and lied about ObamaCare, now they complain that Republicans who unanimously warned this would happen are attacked for not "fixing it."
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It's not a stretch to think that Obama and Pelosi intentionally destroyed the health insurance market so they could rebuild it into a socialist paradise. It's one of the great conspiracies of all time. The losses will reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars. No one will go to jail. No one will pay a price.
This scandal is potentially worse for the American people than the 3,500 deleted emails.